In historical accounts from around the world, it is not uncommon to occasionally come across mentions of unexplained phenomena appearing in the sky.  It makes sense, since many people in previous centuries had a limited understanding of astronomy and how celestial objects appear to us on Earth. Many of these historical UFO sightings can easily […]

How many Sporclers does it take to change a light bulb? Well, if that light bulb is located in Fire Station 6 in Livermore, California, the answer would be none. It is in this location that you will find the Centennial Light. For over 100 years, this little light bulb that could has been burning, […]

At some time or another, you have probably heard the phrase “comparing apples and oranges”. It is often used when someone compares two items that are so different, any such comparison is considered invalid. While there is no direct origin of the idiom, it can be found in many different forms and languages. In Europe, […]

The crack engineering team at Sporcle is always hard at work. Sometimes we are so busy getting bug fixes, features, and improvements out that we don’t do such a great job of letting people know about them. We want to try and fix that, so welcome to New This Week! Derek Pharr Derek Pharr is […]

The Roanoke Colony of 1585 was one of the first attempts by the English to establish a colony in North America. The English colonists set sail in April of 1585 and landed in modern-day North Carolina in July. In 1590, Queen Elizabeth sent another fleet of ships to relieve the desperately hungry and ill colonists. […]

He only played in three games, but Jack ‘Dolly’ Gray has cemented himself in sports history for pulling off one of the greatest trick plays the NFL has ever seen. We have to go back to the early days of the NFL. Ollie Kraehe was the owner and player-coach of the St. Louis All-Stars. In […]

Even today, some 400 years after his death, William Shakespeare remains one of the world’s most famous authors. Perhaps no other writer has had their work studied, analyzed, and reinterpreted more than him. Shakespeare has commonly been credited with inventing hundreds (or thousands) of new words. He was known to draw from a diverse collection […]

It’s back-to-school time for kids. The days are getting shorter and the weather is slowly starting to change. Thankfully, we have one last holiday to celebrate the unofficial end of summer. While Labor Day may have originated as a day to recognize worker rights, today in the United States, it has become a day for […]

Daylight Saving Time is the custom of advancing clocks by one hour in the summertime months so that daylight extends further into the evening hours. Ben Franklin is generally thought to be the first to advance the idea of changing one’s schedule to make better use of daylight hours while saving on candles or oil […]

Chicago is a city of many names – The Second City, Chi-Town, and The Heart of America, to name a few. Among the city’s most widely known nicknames, however, is the Windy City. If you’ve ever felt the frigid breeze off Lake Michigan on a winter day in Chicago, the name probably seems fitting. However, […]

Many preschoolers around the world are taught the popular Ring Around the Rosie nursery rhyme. Many versions of the game involve singing the song and walking around in a circle with joined hands, and falling or curtseying at the very end. The most common American version of the rhyme usually goes something like this: Ring-a-round […]

It doesn’t matter where you sit on the political spectrum. Following politics in the United States can be downright depressing sometimes. No one can seem to agree on anything, and it’s easy to become disillusioned by the entire political process. However, once in a while, our elected officials come together in bipartisan support of a […]

Back in 2009, President Obama made a little error when delivering his Inaugural Address. Though he was being sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, he was wrong in saying, “Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath.” That was because Obama was actually only the 43rd American to do so. How […]

History is filled with strange and fascinating stories of ghost towns and abandoned cities, whose population left for reasons still unknown. One of the oldest abandoned cities known to historians and archaeologists is Mohenjo-Daro, located in modern-day Sindh territory in southeastern Pakistan. It was only discovered and excavated in the 1920s, and huge questions about […]

It’s not really any secret – English can be a tough, strange language at times. It is a language full of contradictions. Why is there no apple or pine in pineapple, or ham in hamburger? There are also many rules, and conversely, many exceptions to them. ‘I’ before ‘E’ except after ‘C’ – but what […]